The social network LinkedIn can be exploited to reveal the email addresses of celebrities and company bosses, according to Rhino Security Labs.
A feature which checks whether a user’s email contacts are on LinkedIn can be abused to check which email address is linked to a given profile, simply by populating a contact book with variations on that person’s name.
Speaking to journalist Brian Krebs, researchers from Rhino said they had chosen to target the American businessman Mark Cuban as a means of proving their point.
"We created several hundred possible addresses for Cuban in a few seconds, using a Microsoft Excel macro," said Bryan Seely, chief technology officer at Rhino.
"It’s just a brute force guessing game, but 90 percent of people are going to use an email address that includes components of their real name."
LinkedIn users can demand that those requesting a connection enter the recipients email address before they can send an invitation, but the firm claims that few make use of this feature, which would not protect against this exploit.
Contacted by Krebs, a spokeswoman from the firm said that the network would soon offer a feature by which users could prevent themselves being found via their email address.
